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<title>me and you are such a beautiful tragedy (in love with agony) by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28715133">me and you are such a beautiful tragedy (in love with agony)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds'>lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>And honestly, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Blood Kink, Blood and Violence, Bondage and Discipline, Bottom Jason Todd, Dick Grayson Has Abandonment Issues, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Dom Dick Grayson, Dubcon Bondage, Earth-3, Edgeplay, F/M, Female Dick Grayson, Femdom, Fucked Moralities, Fucking mood, Getting Back Together, Idiots in Love, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd is a Talon, Jason Todd's Glowing Eyes, Jason wants to be a good person but he wants to get laid more, Knifeplay, Lazarus Pit Madness, Miiight be dubcon?, Murder, Mutual Pining, No Beta We Die Like Jason’s balls, POV Jason Todd, Pain With Porn, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Pegging, Plot With Porn, Porn with Feelings, Sub Jason Todd, Talon Eyes, Thomas Wayne is a bad dude(TM), Top Dick Grayson, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, aka Jason thinks the fact that Dick can murder him is H A W T, aka no one has a moral compass, autassassinophilia, but he's now Red Hood, random oc death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:00:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28715133</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
<em>Jason shrugs.</em>
</p><p>
<em>“Death changes you.”</em>
</p><p>
<em>Her eyes flash gold like a warning, lips curling into something bitter.</em>
</p><p>
<em>“Wouldn’t I know it,” she drawls, slotting their bodies together like puzzle pieces, like a lock and a key. He’s hard as diamonds against her despite his best efforts, like putty in her hands. Richelle still doesn’t let him kiss her, instead leaving a blood-stained imprint of her lips on his cheeks, warm and familiar. “Difference is, I always came back. You didn’t.”</em>
</p><p>
<em>Abandonment. The worst sin in Richelle’s eyes. It would be unforgiveable from anyone but him. She would kill anyone else in his place. Hell, she still might kill him. Jason thinks he might let her.</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>Breakups in Gotham tend to end in bloodshed. Unfortunately for Jason, forgiveness tends to start the same way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dick Grayson/Jason Todd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>me and you are such a beautiful tragedy (in love with agony)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterleafs/gifts">bitterleafs</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This took FOREVER but I am pleased with it, and I hope everyone enjoys! </p><p>Crow, you've been so delightful about this project so I decided to gift it to you! Hope you like &lt;3</p><p>Also! Song to listen to this fic with is Nails by Call Me Karizma. It suits it perfectly &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The thing about the Lazarus Pit is it consumes you. It’s greedy, like Midas’s touch on a cellular level. It replaces the old with the new – with <em>it</em> – carving a home in blood and soul for its will. For its intentions, passive though they seem at first. Mental stability is only one cost of such a bargain, but it’s by far the worst.</p><p>Jason can take the constant aches and phantom pains from his shed skin, from the bruises and scars and marks soul-deep rather than skin-carved. Jason can take the way his eyes glow like a flashlight when he gets pissed, the way his emotions churn back and forth like a Stage Four hurricane in his eyes no matter how much effort he puts into hiding them. Jason can even take the heightened sex drive he’s constantly denying and ignoring because no one in this business has time for sex, let alone the kind of sex the monster simmering beneath his skin craves. But the lack of presence of mind, the inability to separate himself from Lazarus, the <em>blanks</em> in his memory when he’s angry enough for the world to spin a dark, toxic green aren’t things he knows how to handle.</p><p>Killing is, in many ways, a clutch for balance. Red and green mesh in a satisfactory way that keeps him <em>present</em>, at the front of his thoughts and away from the temptuous hum of ghosts in his head, the tug of <em>Lazarus</em>. Beyond that, killing is a home he’d made before, with Thomas and Richelle, back when he hadn’t cared about the <em>who</em> or the <em>why</em> so long as it wasn’t him. Violence and murder and blood lust are things he’s fluent in, and even Ra’s and Talia’s valiant attempts at instilling him with a modicum of self-control when it comes to bloodshed can’t drown out the urge entirely.</p><p>Now that he’s free from Thomas, now that he’s no longer warming Richelle’s bed, he’s more discriminate with them. He offers criteria his kills must meet; he has limits and checks and balances so he’s not just an executioner. He is judge and jury too, he is in <em>control</em>. But he delights in it far too much to think himself separate from the carnage; he enjoys it in the way a painter enjoys painting, because he’d been taken from Crime Alley and made into a murderer. That monster lives and breathes in him, coaxed to the surface by Lazarus’s pretty hums Jason can’t quite decipher. It’s insidious because he <em>wants</em> it. He wants the mindless euphoria, wants the senseless violence – Lazarus doesn’t <em>coerce</em> so much as <em>persuade,</em> taking the ugliness already there and ramping it to the max – as much as he doesn’t <em>want</em> to want it.</p><p>Jason wants to be a good man, he wants to be someone kids look up to and find comfort in, someone who inspires hope rather than fear, but he’s a product of his surroundings. He is what he had to become to survive, not <em>Death</em> so much as the product of it. The product of red lips whispering murder like dirty talk in his ear, bloody hands peeling off the litany of excuses and denials and justification he coats himself on until he’s bared before her. The product of a proud hand firm on his shoulder, a fatherly gleam as he’s taught to carve warnings and ruin upon a sea of unworthy subjects.</p><p><em>For the Court,</em> Thomas sometimes says.</p><p><em>For us</em>, Richelle sometimes says.</p><p><em>For fun</em>, Jason sometimes thinks.</p><p>And he wonders if this is what he’d been created for. He wonders if his calloused hands were made to slit throats, if his pouted lips were meant to lick the blood from her skin, if his eyes were meant to take in the beauty of death, if his heart was meant to never race despite the rush of power.</p><p><em>You were made for this,</em> Thomas says.</p><p><em>You were made for me,</em> Richelle says.</p><p><em>I was made to be wrong</em>, Jason says.</p><p>But maybe it’s a mix of all three answers, because he can’t find safety in softness and silence more than danger and violence and screams, can’t find comfort in any flesh beyond hers no matter who he kills or fucks, can’t be the right version of Jason Todd no matter where he lingers or lives or how hard he tries to be <em>good</em>.</p><p>He was <em>made</em> to be a fuck up, not sadistic enough for Thomas, not <em>strong</em> enough for Richelle, not <em>moral</em> enough to thrive anywhere else. He’s the conglomerate of dichotomous versions of Jason Todd shattered by trauma, a collection of broken things that can’t fit together no matter how deeply intertwined they are.</p><p>He’s the Jason Todd stealing from Owlman because of the painful aches of starvation. He’s the Jason Todd disemboweling a particularly vocal politician the Syndicate isn’t happy with before Richelle’s hungry eyes. He’s the Jason Todd throwing up in a trash can before the tableau Richelle makes out of some idiot kid that had made him upset. He’s the Jason Todd falling apart beneath her eager fingers and coming together between her strong thighs. He’s the Jason Todd with shit luck and a reckless streak Jokester takes advantage of; a corpse walking around like a person. He’s remorseful and sadistic and dead and alive and guilty and <em>not</em>.</p><p>He’s every version of them and also <em>none of them</em>, and it’s such a mind fuck that Lazarus loves feeding into it, loves coaxing forward out of the mental confines he traps his dilemma in.</p><p>It doesn’t help that he can feel their eyes on him at all times, no matter where he is. He can feel Thomas’s disappointment every time he uses a gun instead of his hands or blades, can feel Richelle’s anger every second he resists her siren call and abstains from returning to her like an eager puppy dog.</p><p>Jason thinks, sometimes, that they don’t want him anymore. That this tentative life he’s built out of his death and all the half-assed attempts at being good only exists because they don’t <em>care</em> anymore, but then he remembers that Richelle doesn’t let toys go. She doesn’t let them flock around the Earth without divine retribution, without a price paid in blood and life. Indifference isn’t a grey area where eyes don’t look, it’s crimson strokes and flatlined silence.</p><p>Every second he spends outside their spheres of influence is a test. Every minute he abstains from the comfort of Richelle’s arms and lips and toxic love, he knows he’ll have to pay for in his blood.</p><p>There is no escape, after all, this is temporary. A temporary reprieve while they watch and she wonders if he’ll ever be enough for her, while he wonders if he’ll ever stop jumping between right and wrong like he can ever be the former and will ever escape the latter.</p><p>So he tries, he tries to be good. Tries to make his dead mom proud like she’d ever had the presence of mind to care. Tries to wash the blood off his hands like he hadn’t enjoyed putting it there. Tries to forget the way Richelle’s eyes warmed when she came, and the way one corner of her mouth ticks up when Jason does something she’s particularly happy with. He fails on all accounts, but he <em>tries,</em> and he manages to keep away from her long enough for her patience to run out which is practically a miracle.</p><p>By the time she comes to take him back, Jason’s excuses and reasons and justifications are almost entirely dried up like water in Death Valley; he loves her, always has, but he hates himself for it despite never being able to hate her. She’s just a beautiful product of Thomas, of cruelty and violence and sanctified retributions like an angel of death. He can’t hate her anymore than he can hate Thomas, no matter how much he wants to at times. But he can hate himself. He can hate the dark cravings burning like fire in his veins, can hate the way he aches for the pain and blood and wrongness the way his mom had ached for those death-sticks dressed like satisfaction.</p><p>But he can’t hate her. He can’t hate what she makes from him. That’s always been the problem.</p><p>Richelle’s always had the patience of a saint in some ways, but he should have known it wouldn’t be infinite, that she’d tire of his indecision and make one for him, as she always does in the end.</p><p>So it’s no surprise what comes next. Not anymore.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Angel Santimeno is anything but angelic. His list of sins is long enough that he’s put directly on Jason’s radar, with a rap sheet of near arrests long enough that someone else should’ve nailed him for something by now. Serial rapist with a predisposition for non-consensual degradation and knife play, mutilation only one of the many indignities he delights in inflicting. Not even Bullock, with his hard-ass intensity and righteous desire to rain hell on any of the many sick fucks throughout Gotham, had managed to hold Santimeno for more than a night before lawyers and prettily packaged evidence forced him to concede (assisted, as ever, by the less morally scrupulous boys in blue – Montoya, primarily, and Gordon when Thomas isn’t generous enough with his coin purse).</p><p>(<em>If not us, then who?</em> Richelle whispers in his memories, mouth excruciating against his ear, tongue filthy where it marks. <em>The law? The GCPD? Jokester? You know better, Jay. I know you do.</em>)</p><p>But no one does, so Jason puts on his helmet and arms himself with enough armor and ammo to survive however many bodyguards Santimeno surrounds himself with, dressed in red like an ordained hand of God. No one notices and after <em>weeks</em> of surveillance, he goes to strike. It’s too bad he’d forgotten a key rule to Gotham:</p><p>
  <em>Beware the Court of Owls, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>                That watches all the time…</em>
</p><p>Safety’s off both Glocks before he registers the scene in front of him, metallic-coppery scent burning his nostrils and falling like ashes on his tongue. Bodies line the floor of the apartment like ducks in a row, each bleeding crimson like offerings to a vengeful god. Little lambs brought to slaughter with neat cuts across their throats that look deceptively like ribbons. <em>Presents</em>, Jason can’t help but view them as, eyeing the Kevlar-piercing rounds their guns are loaded with that had not, in fact, been accounted for.</p><p>Jason tries not to think about how that makes him feel.</p><p>He steps across the ruinous arterial spray and pools of sacrificial spills carefully, every inch of him tightly coiled and ready to spring, because Richelle (who else would do something like this for him but her, after all?) is unpredictable in her fury, and there’s no way she’s anything <em>but</em> furious now. He’s anticipated it since his death, the last thought of his life as <em>Talon</em> and the first thought of his life as Red Hood.</p><p>Blood coats her skin like a spray tan when he steps into the room, and he can almost see his heart pounding in her hand (<em>I think I’ll eat your heart, my love,</em> she says in some of his nightmares, reaching into him and taking apart everything that’s not her until she’s all that’s left).</p><p>In reality, she drags her blade across Angel Santimeno’s throat in one quick stroke like a painter with a brush, closing her eyes and breathing in when he colors her features with his death. One step closer, and she exhales.</p><p>They both know, in the moment she senses him there with her, that he’s leaving with her. One way or another (<em>body bag or bed sheets,</em> he thinks dryly. It wouldn’t be the first time for either option.)</p><p>Richelle’s lips are as red as any other night, with her preferred product over matted lipsticks and temporary glosses, and her eyes are alight with a manic glee he knows all too well.</p><p>“Little Wing,” she says, voice whiskey-thick as she drops the blade to the ground. “Long time no see.”</p><p>“Not long enough,” he says through gritted teeth, willing away the rush of arousal he feels taking her image in. The azure blue of her fingerstripes is just as coated as her lips, and she presses them to his cheek with a smirk.</p><p>Jason doesn’t step back, even though he probably should. Something about her is too mesmerizing for him to fathom looking away, too enrapturing to bother pointing the gun at her head and letting off some pent-up aggression. She meets his kill standards, after all, but not even Lazarus’s thrall can overtake the one she has on him.</p><p>She cocks her head curiously, a wicked gleam in her eyes as she traces his jaw, tilts his chin down so he’s looking at her. Her other hand reaches up to grip his waist possessively, bruising despite the layers of armor and leather between her uniformed fingers and his bare skin.</p><p>Richelle goes up on her tiptoes, lips ghosting over Jason’s like something straight out of his dreams, good and bad.</p><p>“Didn’t ‘cha miss me?”</p><p><em>Miss</em> isn’t the right word. It had been withdrawal, sharp pangs of craving and longing steeped in bitterness. It had been aches, like an endless hunger he hadn’t fully understood until the option of satisfaction no longer was available.</p><p>He doesn’t say yes, but he also doesn’t say no. For Richelle, that’s as good as a declaration of intent.</p><p>Her fingers trace his face gently, as gentle as she’s capable of, mapping him out like some long-forgotten land she wants to colonize.</p><p>“Your eyes are green,” she murmurs, nipping at his bottom lip and pulling away when he chases her mouth. “They weren’t before. Lazarus?”</p><p>Jason shrugs.</p><p>“Death changes you.”</p><p>Her eyes flash gold like a warning, lips curling into something bitter.</p><p>“Wouldn’t I know it,” she drawls, slotting their bodies together like puzzle pieces, like a lock and a key. He’s hard as diamonds against her despite his best efforts, like putty in her hands. Richelle still doesn’t let him kiss her, instead leaving a blood-stained imprint of her lips on his cheeks, warm and familiar. “Difference is, I always came <em>back</em>. You didn’t.”</p><p>Abandonment. The worst sin in Richelle’s eyes. It would be unforgiveable from anyone but him. She would kill anyone else in his place. Hell, she still might kill him. Jason thinks he might let her.</p><p>“I wanted to.”</p><p>It’s as honest as its opposite. He’d spent as much time wanting to be with her as wanting to be anywhere else. Wanting to be <em>anyone</em> but the Jason Todd she’d crafted under Thomas’s guidance, a fun toy she’d fallen in love with accidentally. He wonders at times if Thomas had seen that coming, and if his death had been a punishment for Richelle. Retribution for some hurdle she didn’t jump through fast enough, some standard she didn’t reach perfectly enough.</p><p>“But you also didn’t.”</p><p>She’s always known him best, and normally, that’s a comfort. He’d never felt her in a room with him, after his resurrection. He’d never noticed her following him (not that he always could, she’s better at hiding than he is at looking). But now, now he’s just hoping she only noticed the murder half of his body count more so than the people he’d let in his bed.</p><p>None of them had fucked him, he hadn’t gone <em>that</em> far, but she’s always been possessive of her things. She’d just as soon peel the skin from his body cell by cell as allow someone else to mark him. She’d also probably track each of them down and leave them around town for Jason to stumble upon like warnings and gifts.</p><p>“I <em>couldn’t</em>,” he says, pressing his forehead to hers and wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’m not…<em>like</em> you. I can’t just kill whoever Thomas tells me to. I can’t <em>be</em> the obedient soldier he wants.”</p><p>Richelle gives him the most unimpressed look he’s ever seen grace her features, like he’d just told her Crocky Crunch was discontinued.</p><p>“And I am?” she laughs, a breathy thing that he feels fan his face, a warm caress he’s missed far more than he’ll ever admit. “Baby, I piss Thommy off on the <em>daily</em> with my insubordination. I don’t just do whatever he says, as much as he wishes I would. Did you completely forget all those times I told him to go fuck himself?”</p><p>“But you’re <em>his</em>,” Jason counters, ignoring the way he leans into her touch, the way his body practically <em>begs</em> for more. “I’m yours, but you’re always going to be <em>his</em>.”</p><p>Richelle shoves him hard, letting him sprawl on the concrete floor covered in her broken playthings.</p><p>“I’m not <em>fucking</em> him. He’s more like a shitty father figure I never asked for than anything else. Where the hell is this coming from?”</p><p>Jason scoffs.</p><p>“Like he’s never tried, and like you wouldn’t bend right over if he—”</p><p>She cuts him off with her fist, straddling him – thighs trapping his legs in place and fingers tight against his neck – and every bit as tainted by her mess as him. <em>Fuck</em>, he thinks, <em>forgot how strong she is. </em>Part of it thrills him. Part of it scares him. Horny and afraid, as it goes. Man is he feeling the worst of both right now.</p><p>Gold swirls in azure eyes like an oil spill in the ocean, lips curled in a colder smile. She looks powerful like this, on top of him, wearing blood just as perfectly as she wears a dress to a gala. Richelle’s seemingly effortless perfection used to annoy the fuck out of him, but now…now it’s endearingly irritating.</p><p>“I <em>was</em> going to take you back if you asked nicely, no punishment needed,” she says, shifting her hips enough for some much-desired friction but not enough for any relief to pair with it. “But since Alfie and Daddy dearest aren’t here to wash your mouth out with soap, punishment falls to me.”</p><p>Jason feels his heart pound like a cymbal in his throat, the heat of her body eating at him like acid, marking him as hers once again. He bares his throat almost unconsciously, entirely to her whims.</p><p>She smirks, leaning closer.</p><p>“Gonna say please?” Richelle whispers, breath hot against Jason’s neck. “We both know how you love being punished, my Little Wing. Going to beg for forgiveness? I promise I can make it hurt so good…”</p><p>She seals the promise with a kiss to his pulse, wet and filthy, scorching as she drags it along the column of his neck. He shivers against her, moving how she moves him, letting her strip him of his suit piece by piece, uncaring of the blood against his skin, dragged across it from her lips and fingers.</p><p>Manipulative bitch.</p><p>It’s just his luck he had to go and fall in love with her.</p><p>“Fuck you,” he snaps, but it’s entirely without heat. From the smirk he can feel pressed against his jaw, she knows it too.</p><p>“Not tonight, handsome,” she purrs, voice a liquid sin he soaks in. “But maybe if you’re a good boy for me, I can give you a treat. That requires obedience though, just so we’re clear.”</p><p>“I won’t—”</p><p>“You <em>will</em>,” she promises, and he can feel her teeth against his skin like a blade. Richelle’s her own weapon, he’s always known it, and he can feel it beneath her. “We both know you’ll give in, so why bother fighting? Does it make you feel <em>proud</em>, abstaining from me for so long?”</p><p>“I guess,” Jason pants, the scent of her coconut shampoo and the coppery intoxication painting her skin feeding his memories, his <em>Lazarus</em>.  “You’re not as irresistible as you think you are.”</p><p>Her teeth break skin this time, blood slowly dripping from the wound and on to her lips. She licks them, head cocked, eyes a solid gold warning he’s never actually followed.</p><p>“That so?”</p><p>Jason shivers against her, hips thrusting up to meet her warmth, but there’s a prick at his neck and then Richelle’s slipping away like a fading blue light on the horizon. He reaches for her, and she laughs that laugh of hers that always means pain for him. Exasperated pain to the point of pleasure.</p><p>He hopes that this time, she doesn’t step on his balls quite so hard.</p><p><em>Nightie night my birdy,</em> she sing-songs far above him, <em>away </em>from him.</p><p>Black-coated oblivion is all that answers her song, and Jason knows nothing else.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Jason wakes trussed up like a Christmas pig above the four-poster bed he knows well. Azure blue sheets she’d bought for him – <em>your eyes glow when you’re against that shade, Rich, did ya know that? Like a damn homing beacon I can’t help following</em> – replaced with a teal shade he recognizes as the shade of his eyes. The chains binding him are her thick metal set, gleaming in a way that lets him know they’ve been cleaned recently (he has to shove down the irrational surge of jealousy he feels at that, because she doesn’t owe him fidelity anymore). This isn’t exactly a new experience since Richelle likes tying him up above their bed and making him dance (so to speak) for her favor when he’s <em>really</em> pissed her off, but it’s been a long time since the last.</p><p>About a week before his death, over the same thing that got him killed in the end – his recklessness.</p><p>“So,” Richelle says in silken tones, “Little Wing’s awake.”</p><p>Jason has to lift his head to see more than her toned legs wrapped in leather boots, craning his neck uncomfortably so he can drag his eyes over the garters and fishnet stockings, over the short corset dress colored in red that he’s seen her in a dozen or more times, and up to her smirking lips, painted in lipstick instead of blood.</p><p>She uncrosses her legs as he admires her, strutting towards him with all the authority of a General. Her nails are sharp on his chin, testing, as she angles his eyes to focus on her. She didn’t have to though – Jason’s eyes are always on her.</p><p>“Back here again. You look at home. One would wonder why you ever left.”</p><p>“Left your bed or left your side?” Jason asks.</p><p>Her eyes narrow, tides of swirling gold and blue.</p><p>“Both.”</p><p>“A sane person wouldn’t have to wonder.”</p><p>Richelle snorts.</p><p>“And you’re just the <em>picture</em> of sanity, aren’t you?”</p><p>Jason shakes his head, brushing off the venom in her words to focus on the hurt. Of all the things he’s never wanted to do, hurting her is at the top. Leaving hadn’t been about hurting her. Leaving had been about saving himself from her beautiful, <em>beautiful</em> darkness.</p><p>“I want to be a good man,” he confesses. “Lazarus…it brought me back, and I want to kill the people that <em>deserve</em> it.”</p><p>Richelle pats his head as she would a dog’s, lips curled mockingly.</p><p>“Good and evil are paltry concepts for those too weak to know what they want and <em>take </em>it. You used to be stronger Jay. You used to be one of us.”</p><p>“Killing indiscriminately like a hired fucking gun?”</p><p>“No,” she says, lips pressing against the shell of his ear. “Dominant. The old you wouldn’t have fallen for my little distraction, and he wouldn’t be sitting here like a kicked dog waiting for the next punishment. He would <em>fight back</em>. He would understand that everyone deserves death in their own ways.”</p><p>“Even you?”</p><p>“<em>Especially</em> me.”</p><p>Her nails move from his head down his chest, tracing the seam-like edges of his autopsy scar like she wants to unzip his flesh and watch it spill on their sheets, wants to be <em>in </em>him in the most intimate way possible (<em>her hand stroking his heart, her nails scratching his skin</em>). He shudders at her touch, aroused despite himself.</p><p>“Therapy might help with that,” Jason says in a forced tone, trying to suppress any sound her tenuous explorations might induce. His voice catches as her hands and lips dip lower, over his stomach to his thighs, brushing over each scar to add it to her mental map of him. Jason has the sudden (but all-together unsurprising) realization that he’s completely nude.</p><p>He feels her smirk, pressing a wet kiss to his inner thigh, teeth pricking his flesh as gently as she’s willing to do it. His cock springs to attention beside her, as responsive as it always is.</p><p>She gives it a mildly insulting pat, but otherwise ignores it.</p><p>“If I want to talk about my daddy issues, I’d listen to Quinn’s blathering’s. Dealing death is good enough for me, thanks.”</p><p>He shifts under her, warmed by her tracing his thighs, categorizing every unfamiliar mark she hadn’t placed there like she wants to peel it off and change it. Possessive, as always.</p><p>“Aren’t you bothered? Don’t you care about—”</p><p>“The people I kill?” her voice rings with amusement, tongue brushing over a brand she’d put there years ago, her little signature on her property. Because he’s hers, has been since the minute he saw her. “Why would I?”</p><p>“They don’t <em>deserve it</em>.”</p><p>“Some do, some don’t. I get something out of it either way, and you can’t tell me you don’t enjoy it too.”</p><p>Richelle sits up, head resting on her hands, just under his cock. She kisses it, painting the light flesh of it in her colors.</p><p>“I’ve felt your pulse, Little Wing.” She whispers, pressing a kiss along his length. He shivers, despite himself. “I’ve tasted the satisfaction like smoke from your tongue. I’ve fucked you over our kills, so quit being a damn <em>hypocrite</em>.”</p><p>“Rich—” he mutters, thrusting towards her again, wanting that familiar heat, wanting her love and her embrace or as close to love and embraces as he can get from her, but she lays on her back and <em>just</em> out of his reach.</p><p>“I thought you wanted to be a <em>good man</em>?” she mocks. “Good men don’t fuck sociopathic killers just ‘cause their dick is hard.”</p><p>She runs a nail over it, enough to make it twitch without satisfaction. She drags it slow, the way she smokes a cigarette and the way she sucks him off in back alleys when they’re both high on blood and adrenaline and each other. Jason had thought she’d be fast, furious, violent, but no. She likes watching him squirm on her honey-worded hooks; sadism doesn’t always mean whips and chains.</p><p>“Good men don’t get <em>off</em> on the kill like you do. Your glowstick eyes tell me all I need to know, Jay. You always light up like that with me. My beautiful, stupid bird.”</p><p>“Rich,” he tries again, but she cuts him off with her lips and tongue, sliding into him smoothly, reclaiming what’s hers and always has been. Jason lets his eyes shut, and pushes himself into her, taking what she takes, letting her have him.</p><p>He loves it far too much.</p><p>She tastes like copper and chocolate and some apple-tart wine he doesn’t know the name of. Her lips are smooth and familiar as they move against his, unhurried and indulgent, languishing in his surrender the more he squirms, the more he aches to touch her.</p><p>Richelle breaks it off with an air of smugness.</p><p>“Missed this, didn’t you? Parade of hitlist-to-be’s not satisfactory?”</p><p>“You know about that,” he mutters. “Of course you know about that.”</p><p>Her eyes flash in warning, but her lips remain smug.</p><p>“I do so love a good kill, babe. You know that. Some of ‘em even had witnesses. I got a bit…<em>sloppy</em>.”</p><p>The idea of Richelle going out to murder the random women he’d fucked and thrown out indiscriminately should probably horrify him. Jason should probably feel really guilty, or at least somewhat less aroused.</p><p>He isn’t the slightest bit turned off. Her jealousy and tendencies towards murderous tantrums have always been firmly placed in the <em>turn-on</em> category in his brain.</p><p>Maybe she’s not the only one with fucked wiring that needs therapy. Not that he much cares with her attention focused on him, with her hands and lips on him.</p><p>“No protests?”</p><p>He’s silent, jaw set, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of verbal affirmations. Not yet.</p><p>“Good,” she purrs, and pulls the chains off, letting him fall onto their silk sheets face first. Richelle moves the metal chains to pull him against the headboard, legs free but hands still bound. “I missed feeling you under me.”</p><p>She slips free of the curve-hugging corset and tosses it to the side, bared of all but her fishnets and heels. In the next instant, she’s on him. Her lips seal his shut like a warning and a promise. Her thighs tighten around his waist, her nails claw at his shoulders.</p><p>Richelle pushes closer, impossibly closer, probing and plundering and warm and wet and <em>familiar</em>. They might as well be one person, Jason thinks, because he can’t imagine ever leaving after this. Not again.</p><p>He’s only so strong, and he can taste her smugness in her kiss.</p><p>She shifts against him, crawls up his body with her nails like claws scraping against his skin. Her breath is hot on his ear, and she grinds against his cock until a noise escapes him. She rocks slowly, <em>painfully</em> slow, and bites his skin like she can erase everyone else with just that. Like she can own him anymore than she already does, like she can crawl into his skin and call it hers.</p><p>“<em>Rich</em>,” he murmurs, soft and low. “Pretty bird, please—”</p><p>Another smug kiss, a smooth slide of tongue pressed against the seam of his lips. He grants her entrance, again, because he’s utterly hers and utterly stupid.</p><p>“I’m gonna fuck you,” Richelle says matter-of-factly. “And then we’re going to sleep, and you aren’t going to leave ever again. Got it?”</p><p>There is a vulnerability in her statement. A confession of desire he’s not entirely sure she’d meant to say. She’s still worried he’ll leave again. Still worried that after all of this, after all the times she didn’t murder him despite probably wanting to, he will want to be somewhere else. <em>Anywhere</em> else.</p><p>He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth, a silent affirmation.</p><p>Her answering smile is less smug; a fraction of her old warmth, but still warm.</p><p>He hasn’t bottomed for anyone since Richelle, so he’s a bit out of practice, but she seems to stretch him out easily enough. She grabs a glass jar of the stuff they’d always used and slicks up her fingers, coaxing Jason open one finger at a time and giving him time to adjust to each.</p><p>She doesn’t offer praise like she normally would. She’s still mad, after all. He’s lucky she didn’t break out some torture equipment.</p><p>By the time she reaches three fingers, Jason feels like his dick is going to fall off and he’ll die of the most painful case of blue balls known to man. Her fingers have brushed across his prostate purposefully <em>several</em> times, so he knows it’s on purpose. Enough to make him feel a sting of pleasure, not enough for him to feel that beautiful release.</p><p>Sadist. He’d say it, but she’d think of it as a compliment.</p><p>Richelle flips him, moves the chains around so he can sit before her on his elbows and knees and her fingers can trail up and down his thighs. She’s always loved them. He’s pretty sure they are half the reason she’d started sleeping with him.</p><p>“Ready?” she asks, slicking up her toy on both ends and letting it settle between her thighs carefully, pushing it into her (Jason knows this from experience) tight heat with a small hitch the only indication of her pleasure. He misses her noises, he realizes. She’s been quiet on purpose.</p><p>Jason nods, and in she slides.</p><p>Her skin burns against his back, hot and slick and perfect. He gasps as her toy pushes through his thin ring of muscle, as it plunges deeper, her careful coaxing successful as her hips snap forward. They both groan as he adjusts, a little breathy and a lot turned on.</p><p>Richelle drags the toy out slowly, delighting in the noise he makes when it brushes over his prostate, and slams it back in before he can blink. They both pant as she finds a satisfactory rhythm – her hips strong and steady, her nails against his skin and aiming to draw blood, her lips against the back of his neck to cover up her own breathy <em>ah ah’s</em> – desperate and united at long last and warm.</p><p>And finally, <em>finally</em>, Richelle lets him come. She’s shaking, his name on her lips, and he looks over his shoulder and finds her lips on his.</p><p>They kiss as he comes too, the sounds swallowed mutually, and her eyes are wet when he pulls back. Golden haze absent, bright blues wide and open for the first time since they’d reunited. He leans in for another kiss, but one turns into two, and two turns into four, and she’s the one that has to break it so they can breathe.</p><p>Richelle presses a bruising bite to his pulse point slumps on top of him, limp and almost trusting. Relaxed. A pause. A brief reprieve.</p><p>It’s quiet, for a beat. The sound of his skin in her teeth absent, his lips throbbing and his heart pounding. His eyes are shut, but he can still see her with every other sense.</p><p>“I wanted to kill you,” she murmurs into his neck. Her breasts are soft against his chest, and his cock is soft against one of her thighs. “I wanted to gut you, maybe. Wanted to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze until you stopped.”</p><p>Past tense, he notices. He can work with that.</p><p>The rush of arousal, however, is something he should probably not have.</p><p>“I love you,” he says softly, afraid of breaking this truce, this temporary secession of her anger. “I always have.”</p><p>She looks away from him, frowning.</p><p>“I thought you did, once.”</p><p>“I still do.”</p><p>A sigh.</p><p>“I can’t trust that yet.”</p><p>“Then when?”</p><p>Her lips are soft against his, absent of urgency or intent. He indulges in it for a moment, in the warmth and intimacy of it, until she pulls away. She removes the chains entirely, and slumps on top of him the second she’s done.</p><p>“For now, we’ll sleep. We can figure everything else out later. Okay?”</p><p>Jason smiles, wrapping her up in his arms and feeling, for the first time since Lazarus, wholly content.</p><p>"Okay."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>if you like this fic and want to support me + my writing feel free to check out my <a href="https://runnfromtheak.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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